Changing bags in trash cans is a necessary, yet tedious, task which most people have performed either at home or at work. It is a chore that family members tend to dread, as well as one which does not add value to a company's business. Accordingly, techniques for making this chore easier and less time consuming are desirable and some have been proposed.
For example, various patents and patent applications have been proposed which address this chore by providing mechanisms for supplying bags within or as part of the trash can itself. For example, U.S. Patent Publication No. 2005/0029281 describes a trash container bag dispenser which can be universally fitted within any trash container having a generally flat central bottom portion. The dispenser is also removable from the trash container to replace the roll of bags and to clean the trash container. A single bag is individually dispensed within the trash container from a roll of bags. After a first bag is pulled from the trash bag dispenser, subsequent bags are automatically pulled therefrom when a preceding bag is filled and removed from the trash container. Most preferably, the attachment strips comprise mated self adhering hook and loop strips such as those sold under the ™ VELCRO.
Another example is found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,405,041. This patent describes, for example, a self dispensing trash liner pail which consists of a receptacle having a bottom wall and a plurality of upstanding side walls. A dispenser has a top slot formed therethrough. A structure is provided for retaining the dispenser to the bottom wall of the receptacle. A continuous length of a plurality of separable trash liners are carried as a roll within the dispenser. One trash liner at a time can be pulled out through the slot in the dispenser, be separated and used in the receptacle for the disposal of trash and similar articles. Other examples of such systems can be found, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,199,714, 4,823,979, and 5,322,180.
However, there are certain potential problems associated with these existing solutions. For example, all of the above-mentioned systems provide trash bag or liner dispensers which carry the bags or liners in rolls. While this may be a convenient way to dispense trash bags or liners from disassociated boxes to replace individual bags in trash cans which do not include their own dispenser, it may pose certain problems when used in the context of an attached replenishment mechanism. For one thing, rolls require a certain amount of space and clearance to enable the roll to unroll while dispensing new bags. As another example, the amount of force needed to extract the next bag or liner to be used in the trash can can be relatively high since all of the bags in the roll must rotate in the dispenser in order to pull out the next bag and the force is being applied indirectly on the leading edge of the new bag coming from the roll.
In addition to being potentially troublesome in and of itself, the need for a relatively high degree of force to extract the next bag from the dispenser when rolls are used may also limit the choices available for connecting each of the bags together. For example, if a relatively high degree of force is contemplated for pulling the bags from the dispenser, then the mechanism used to link the bags together will preferably be selected such that the bags stay linked together until the top of the new bag reaches the top of the trash can, i.e., it would be undesirable for the force used to pull the bags out to cause an early separation of the linked bags so that the user had to go digging into the dispenser to get the next bag out.
Accordingly, new trash can systems and methods for replacing bags or liners are needed.